March 1997 Vol.18 No.1

Editorial

From 1 January 1997, I took on the editorship of Biocontrol News and Information. Over the past seventeen years, this journal has provided a quick and easily accessible summary of biological control research world-wide, along with topical news and reviews of ongoing programmes and critical issues. Credit for its success must go to David Girling, IIBC Information Officer, who created, developed and produced BNI for all of these years, and who is now retiring from IIBC.

In future, I would like to see BNI grow to become an even more important resource to the researcher and to the biocontrol practitioner. We have just completed a survey of some of our readership and biocontrol profe-ssionals which has given us some very useful information to design BNI in future. We were pleased to learn how much our reviews were valued, and will be extending this section. In January, as has been announced earlier, BNI became one of six CABI journals available on the Internet at the PEST CABWeb® site. This should increase access substantially, parti-cularly as every scientist whose institution has a library subscription to this journal should be able to access the journal directly and free.

In the coming year, we will be establishing an international editorial board for BNI, to ensure that its content is even more topical and relevant to the needs of biocontrol practitioners worldwide. Rebecca Murphy, a professional editor with many years experience in biological control information, will be assisting me in this task, as well as highly expert information staff from CABI's Information Institute and Publishing Division.

I hope that you will share with me your thoughts on BNI and how it could be improved to serve you better, and look forward to your views on the changes which will be happening soon.

Jeff Waage